


what's left of my heart's still made of gold

by deandratb



Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-09 23:33:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19896199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: Before they met, Penelope and Schneider had never seen anything but gray. When their worlds burst into color, she was married and he wasn't sober. But now that they're so deeply woven into each other's lives...it's a lot harder to keep avoiding the truth.





	1. i just want to lay down, these colors make my eyes hurt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snookolive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snookolive/gifts).



> Another soulmate AU! This one is a different premise, and less of a slowburn. I haven't abandoned the one that's still in progress, I promise. But this is an old idea that finally gripped me--and it's fully complete. 
> 
> This whole universe was inspired by a conversation with Amy, who probably doesn't even remember talking about it a year ago. :)

Schneider’s world was gray for decades.

That wasn’t unusual. Lots of people met their soulmates for the first time as adults, the world around them finally bursting into color the moment they touched. 

Some people went through life without knowing exactly who their soulmate was, brushing a stranger in a crowd and watching rainbows appear all around them, never to see their soulmate again. 

And, Schneider knew, some people never met their soulmate at all.

Father was one of those unlucky souls: a man whose world was colorless, as cold as he was. 

Schneider had never been cold. As hard as he tried, he was never any good at the kind of chilly detachment his father wanted him to emulate. But his world was just as gray, and even before he learned to read or write, he’d learned the lesson his parents meant to teach him.

He would never have a soulmate, because he wasn’t good enough. If Father hadn’t found a soulmate after five wives and even more mistresses, then there was no hope for him.

The problem was, Schneider actually wanted a soulmate. He wanted to be loved. He wanted **to** love–to share himself with someone who might, if he was lucky, like him for exactly who he was. That was the point of a soulmate, wasn’t it? To find the person who would love you despite your flaws. 

_And he had plenty of those._

With no hope that there was someone waiting for him out there, Schneider sunk into feelings as cold and gray as the world he lived in. He tried to do what he was told, he watched as women came and went from his life, and he filled the holes with all the substances that money could buy. Alcohol numbed him when he was sad, cocaine made him hilarious so that people wanted to be his friends, gambling kept him entertained when time at home felt like it was slowly killing him. 

If he believed he had a soulmate out there, he might have felt bad for giving up hope, but the thought never occurred to him, not even when he was so high that everything in the universe felt possible. Not even in rehab, when he was so sick and in so much pain that he could have used something like that to cling to. 

Schneider would have felt guilty, knowing that his soulmate was in fact out there still waiting to meet him…except she was as stubborn as he was despondent, and so while he drank and danced his feelings away, she got married and had kids and refused to think about the man she might have met in some other life.

He didn’t have any idea that it was Penelope, of course. Not when they met in the company of her parents and baby Elena, and not a few days later when he ran into her and Victor on their way out of the building. He didn’t enjoy the way the Army dude eyed him, half-dismissive in a way that reminded him of Father and half-threatened, as though Penelope had mentioned his passing interest in her.

_Sue him._ She was gorgeous even sleep-deprived and frazzled, and he enjoyed a good relationship with most of his female tenants. He didn’t make a habit of sleeping with them, but there was no law against flirting--especially since their leases were signed by his father, not him. 

Schneider felt Victor measuring him and finding him lacking, and under the high he was trying to cling to until he could move on from managing the building, he resented it. Luckily, there were always more drugs to bury those feelings under. 

Fate or not, interested or not, the first time he touched Penelope was an accident. They were sharing the elevator, and when she got out on her floor, he followed, carrying the bag of groceries she’d forgotten in her exhausted hurry to get back to Elena. 

As Schneider passed the bag to her, his hand brushed her elbow, and he realized for the first time that the hallway carpet was gray. He knew, of course, logically, that some things surely were, but since everything to him was gray and always had been, it was startling to watch the hallway bloom into colors–real colors–with the hall carpet under his feet still gray.

Not even that stayed the same, though. The world had been one monotone shade this whole time, and now even gray was full of colors. Hints of blue and brown and green, all shimmering blurred together inside the gray of the carpet.

When he looked up, Penelope was staring at him, her brow furrowed in confusion. “You okay?”

“I’m…fine?” He didn’t mean for it to be a question, but he honestly wasn’t sure. “What just happened?”

“You gave me my groceries.” She blinked. “Now you look like a strong wind could knock you over.”

“Oh. Well, I guess if the wind was strong enough, it could knock anybody over,” Schneider agreed faintly. Somewhere deep inside his brain he knew he wasn’t making much sense.

She already seemed like she had been avoiding him since they met. _The elevator ride was awkward and he didn’t know why; he had been happy to see her, the cute mom in 402._ It wouldn’t help anything if she thought he was crazy. 

_But…the colors._ They were everywhere. And with Penelope staring at him, he couldn’t avoid how deep and rich they were in her. The shades of brown in her curly hair, the even warmer brown of her concerned eyes, the way her sweater was a blue so vibrant it almost hurt to look at it. 

Schneider was slightly worried he might actually faint. Right there, only feet away from Penelope Alvarez. His soulmate. 

_Fuck._

_His married soulmate._

Who was looking at him like he’d grown a second head, and she wanted nothing more than to escape his company but couldn’t do so without feeling guilty while he seemed so shaken.

“Come here,” she ordered, reminding him of both her military background and her new mom genes simultaneously, and Schneider shook his head to try and clear it.

The colors stayed just as vibrant, but at least some sense returned to him. He stepped farther away from her instead, wary of the hand she’d raised as though she was going to check his forehead for a fever. 

Penelope's lack of reaction told him that he was the only one dealing with this new technicolor world. If it had been reaching out to her that flipped a switch in him, he could keep this a one-sided experience--as long as there was no touching on her part. 

“I’m good,” he assured her, straightening up and thinking _fine and normal, fine and normal_ as hard as he could, hoping it would read on his face.

“Don’t be a wuss,” she argued, crossing the hall in spite of his protests, and curling her fingers around his wrist. Penelope’s face twisted up in concentration as she counted his heartbeat. _Or whatever it was nurses did with a person’s pulse. He wasn't a hundred percent sure how that worked, exactly._

Schneider waited for the fallout, watching her face for the same earth-shattering color explosion he’d just been through, and kept waiting as she dropped his arm with a nod. “Your heart’s beating a little fast, but your temperature seems fine. Pull it together, would you? I need to get inside to take care of my kid, and I can’t do that if you might collapse out here.”

“I won’t collapse,” he promised, gaping at Penelope as the shock continued to not arrive on her side of the hall. “I’ll just go get in the elevator, and then I won’t be your problem anymore.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that.”

She sighed. “Maybe I did. Elena’s little,and even with my parents here, an hour is too long to be away from her right now. You swear you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” he answered, as though that was the same thing. As he walked to the elevator, he tried to remember if he knew anyone with a soulmate whose soulmate was another person. _That kind of mismatch, it would be a story you’d remember, right?_

Penelope watched him go, and waited until she was inside her apartment before she let out a shaky breath. 

_What the hell was that?_

Not for the first time, she thanked her parents and the Army for training her well in the art of non-reaction. She’d expected that it would help a lot once her daughter was old enough to need it, but she hadn’t anticipated it coming in handy in quite that way. 

_Schneider? Really?_

Her _Mami_ was talking to her as she handed Elena over, swaddled in another pink blanket, her tiny earrings glinting in the light. _Her tiny gold and yellow earrings,_ Penelope noted, feeling numb. She’d assumed, when she couldn’t tell the difference, that the gems in her baby’s ears were pink, given her _Mami’s_ obsession with making her as visibly female as possible. But no, they were yellow stones, set in the shining gold studs. 

The living room was giving her a headache, just because of the sheer volume of jumbled shades everywhere. Now that she could see colors, she desperately wanted to tone it down a little bit. Maybe pick a few colors to center the living room around, rather than living in a color scheme that could be best described as ‘all of them.’

_She couldn’t change it,_ she realized, flinching at the implications. She couldn’t tell anyone she could see colors.

Her parents already thought she could, and Victor knew she couldn’t, and neither of those conversations would end well. 

She couldn’t be sorry that she had chosen Victor, that she had rejected the possibilities of fate and decided it should be up to her who she spent her life with. She couldn’t regret it, with Elena in her arms and Victor on his way home from his new business. Things were going well, she was so happy…so what if her soulmate lived upstairs. 

So what if he had figured it out, too? 

_He'd been so clearly wasted since the moment they met, he probably wouldn’t even remember tomorrow,_ she thought, humming a few bars of Toni Braxton to the baby in her arms.

The next day, when the Twin Towers came crashing down and her life shattered along with them, she had bigger concerns than a ridiculous landlord she had no interest in connecting with. 

She would be back on base with Victor before her _Mami_ would mention in passing that _pobrecito_ Schneider had gone into rehab a few days after 9/11. She would let the comment pass by as though he were nothing more than a guy she met a few times who her _Mami_ had grown fond of. 

Penelope would avoid dealing with it, just like he had--with fewer mind-altering substances--until fate brought them back together fourteen years later. Older, wiser and both sober. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title borrowed from "Stray Italian Greyhound" by Vienna Teng.


	2. listen to the colors, carry them inside you

The last thing Penelope ever wanted was to find herself back in Schneider’s building, living with her mom. She wanted her marriage to work, she wanted to raise her kids in a stable home.

Four years later, she had to admit–if only to herself–that her home was pretty damn stable, and really happy. The kids were flourishing, her _Mami_ was never dull to have around, and she accomplished the biggest goal she’d aimed for in a long time when Dr. Berkowitz added her new title to his office door.

Victor and Nicole came over for dinner after they returned from their honeymoon, and squeezing them in around the table was a tight fit but it was worth it to see the way Alex’s face lit up when Victor teased him. And to watch Elena slowly relax into a new relationship with her _Papi_ that was still delicate, but more honest.

Penelope found Victor chatting with Schneider in the kitchen while the kids were showing a new PS4 game to Nicole. Even though she didn’t overhear what'd been said, she knew it must have been about sobriety. She could feel it in the air as Schneider excused himself and left her alone with her ex.

“Hey, Lupe. You good?”

She still wasn't used to this version of Victor. He seemed really…centered. Happy. He had that new love glow she wanted to resent, but couldn’t, because he'd picked such an amazing woman to share his life with. She turned the question around instead of answering it. “Are you?” 

“Yeah. I really am.” He watched the kids with their new stepmom, and cleared his throat.

Penelope’s eyes sought out Schneider, reflexively, just to reassure herself that all was well there. The moment when Victor had told her Schneider was drinking again was a part of her now, along with every other heartbreak she'd faced in the last 40 years–she could forgive herself for feeling the need to brace for bad news this time.

Victor was still watching Nicole, though, when Penelope looked at him. He smiled a little, then turned away. “I, uh, I don’t know if you’d even want to know this, but I kind of feel like I should tell you.”

“Oh god, she’s pregnant, isn’t she? Please tell me you’re looping me in before you tell the kids.”

“She’s not pregnant, Lupe. It’s nothing like that. But I wanted to say this before, when you met her that first time, and there wasn’t a good moment. Not with…everything.”

“Right. Everything." Her eyes flew to Schneider again, as though she had no say in the matter. He was making her _Mami_ laugh on the couch. _He was perfectly fine._

Penelope forced herself to take a steadying breath and leave him be. "So, what is it then, Victor?”

“Nicole is my soulmate.”

She could hear a dull thudding that she dimly recognized as her own heartbeat, but for a second the whole world was ocean waves as she breathed through the truth settling in and making itself at home.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to, well, make you feel bad or anything. But you and I, we always knew it might happen one day, for either of us? And it did.”

“That’s…that’s really great.” She knew he loved Nicole, and they seemed really happy, but she hadn’t considered the possibility that Nicole was the one. For him to finally find his soulmate after all those years…it was a lot to take in. She was happy for him, though. He was lucky.

Penelope straightened up and pushed the wobble out of her voice. “I mean it. That’s amazing, Victor.”

“I think so too,” he murmured, and the look on his face hit her in the heart. Just a little, just phantom pain where forever used to be. 

Victor squeezed her hand and left to join the family, but she didn’t follow. She needed the moment. The quiet. 

_She was such an idiot._

Schneider had a late date with Avery after their family dinner. He’d be leaving soon to go spend time with his girlfriend, with the woman **he** loved, and Penelope would watch him go. Saying nothing. Because he was in love, and she respected that, and it was her own fault that she saw her soulmate daily but couldn’t find the words to bring it up with him before he'd moved on to his _perfect angel woman._

What would she even say now, after waiting years?

_Oh, hey, you know when we met and I was out of my mind exhausted and you were so high you don’t even remember it? Yeah, that’s when I found out we were soulmates. Sorry I never mentioned it before._

_Right, makes total sense, Penelope._

She couldn’t tell him. And not just because any way she imagined it, she came off looking crazy or worse.

No, she couldn’t tell Schneider because she didn’t know **why** she wanted to tell him. She didn’t know what she wanted–not from Schneider or from the situation. Did she want to date him? Was she ready to tell him she was in love with him?

Wanting to be free of the secret wasn’t a good enough reason. Not when she would be turning both their worlds upside down.

As long as she didn’t have an answer for what came next, her next line…she couldn’t say anything.

Penelope fell asleep that night still trying to write the script, practicing it in her head, looking for an answer.

_“I know I should have told you this sooner…”_

_“I’m not trying to put this on you, I promise…”_

_“I just needed you to know, because you and I, we don’t keep secrets.”_

It was Schneider who woke her back up, her phone buzzing an SOS.

 _ **Sorry to wake you,**_ he'd sent. _ **Can you come up?**_

 _ **Be right there,** _she texted back, grabbing a sweater on her way out of her bedroom.

 _Please don’t be drunk,_ she prayed to no one in particular as she went upstairs. She was prepared for it, if he was, but it hurt to even think it.

Schneider opened the door and nearly blinded her, every light in his apartment on at two a.m. The hand Penelope slapped over her eyes to protect them while they adjusted must’ve clued him in, because he stammered out, “Oh, sorry!” and hit a couple of switches.

The brightness dimmed enough that she could reopen her eyes, and more importantly, be able to see Schneider standing just inside the door.

“I’m really sorry,” he apologized again. “I know it’s the weekend, and you barely get to sleep in as it is…”

“Knock it off, Schneider,” she said, her tone gentler than her words. “You promised to text me if you needed me, and I meant it when I said I would come when you asked. What happened?”

He shut the door behind her and followed her to the couch, settling in before he answered.

“Avery and I broke up.”

Penelope peered at him, glad her eyesight seemed to be returning to normal. “But you’re not…?”

“No, I’m not drinking again.”

She took a second to compare his assertion with her own observations, pushing back hard against the guilt that came along with her doubt. _He looked, and smelled, sober._

For now, that was the best she could do. She would trust him, until she had reason not to. And he’d texted her, hadn’t he? That was a good sign.

“Okay.” Penelope nodded. “Good. What happened with Avery?”

“Well, I told you she was in Paris, right? We had a date tonight because she just got home.”

“Yeah, I remember.” _Rich people, always in fancy foreign cities._ She didn’t see what he saw in Avery at all. But then again, that wasn’t the side of Schneider she was drawn to, so it was never going to make sense to her. 

“Her last day in Paris, Avery met her soulmate.”

“Oh.” _ **Oh.**_

“Yeah.” Schneider sighed. “She wasn’t looking for him, but she bumped into the guy outside a cafe, and it just...you know. Colors everywhere.”

Part of Penelope had assumed that Avery had already met her soulmate, before meeting Schneider, and it hadn’t worked out with that guy. The idea of Avery dating Schneider, knowing they weren't a match, hadn’t occurred to her.

“God, Schneider, I’m–I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks." He shifted next to her. "It’s weird, but I’m really not.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not sorry. It sucks, for me, but I’m happy for her. She’s amazing, and she deserves it. Y'know?”

“Yeah, I guess. But as your friend, I still get to be sorry,” she argued. “I know you love her.”

“I do, yeah. Did,” he corrected himself. “I did.”

“Schneider.” Penelope smiled at him. “You’re allowed to still love her. It’s nobody’s fault that you’re not her soulmate.”

“I know. Still hurts, though.”

 _Doesn’t it ever,_ she thought ruefully. It had to be the soulmate thing, didn’t it, that made her heart ache watching him in pain? They were connected.

“I know." Penelope patted his arm. "So, you texted me instead of drinking?”

“Well, technically, I texted my sponsor instead of drinking. And had some leftover soup Lydia made me the other day. And listened to that Watsky album I told you about…a few times. Then I texted you. Instead of drinking.”

“I’m glad.” She waited until he looked at her. “I’m really glad you invited me up instead of doing something you would regret. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Right.” 

Schneider reached for her hand, and even though he did it casually, it got her attention. _Schneider never did that._

He offered hugs freely. He hadn’t protested when she reached out, any of the times she had after his father’s visit. But that was worlds away from this moment, from Schneider taking her hand in his and keeping it there.

It was a shift in the ground underneath her. Penelope felt it move.

“You never talk about soulmates,” Schneider murmured, his thumb brushing the back of her hand. “Is it because it hurts too much, everything that happened with Victor?”

_Wait. What?_

Did he really think that Victor was her soulmate?

 _Huh._ _Well, that explained a lot._

And it gave her an out. Didn’t it?

 _Of course it didn’t,_ her conscience answered back. She demanded honesty from Schneider, and owed him that much in return. Even if the truth was dangerous. 

“Everything with Victor hurt,” Penelope agreed. “But that’s not why. I never really talk about my soulmate with anybody. It’s complicated.”

“More complicated than an alcoholic trying to make it work with the wrong girl and then losing her to fate anyway?”

“Yeah. Even worse than that.”

“Wow. We’re quite a pair then.”

 _God, it was like getting her heart broken, over and over again._ Except she knew, as surely as she knew all the lyrics to "On Bended Knee," that Schneider would never hurt her on purpose.

She didn’t want to hurt him either.

That was why she’d never told him. _Why break his heart? Why tell him she was his soulmate when she belonged to someone else? Or when she wanted to?_ He deserved better.

When the voices in her head got really bad, Penelope followed that thought to its logical conclusion. _Schneider deserved better than **her.** Maybe if she left it alone, let him stay in the dark, he would find better._

Lots of people were okay without finding their soulmates. They were happy. _Schneider could have that,_ she told herself late at night, when she lost the battle to avoid thinking about it. _He could be happy._

She was happy just getting to have a little part of him, having him in her life at all. She wasn’t ready to risk that.

But Schneider’s hand, still in hers, went back to absently stroking the pad of his thumb along her skin, and she jolted.

He let go of her immediately. “Sorry! God, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t…”

Schneider wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence, so he didn’t. He let it sit between them, not sure what to do with the expression on her face, either.

She was staring, but not at him. At his living room. _At his wall, or his albums, maybe?_

“Penelope?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you alright?”

“No.” Her mouth set into a firm line, and she shook her head, mussed curls flying. “I’m really tired.”

“Oh. Right. Sure. You don’t have to keep me company,” he promised. “I’ll go back to texting Nick. You go to bed.”

“I’m not sleepy,” Penelope replied, a sigh in her voice. “I’m tired. I’m tired of half-truths and being careful and feeling like a crappy friend. I’m tired of being sorry. I’m really sorry, Schneider.”

Her eyes were filling, and he had absolutely no idea why.

“Sorry? For what? You’re not a bad friend, Pen. You’re my best friend. I think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

 _He wasn't going to make it easy,_ she acknowledged silently. But it was time. It was years past time. 

_Rip off the band-aid, Penelope._

“I think I’m in love with you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title borrowed from "The Breaking Light" by Vienna Teng.


	3. pull me out from inside, i am ready

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that we're here at the end, thank you for reading this story! I had a lot of fun writing it.

“I think I’m in love with you.”

Penelope’s words landed like a bomb in the silence of Schneider’s living room, in the inches of space between them.

And in his heart, which he’d kept closely guarded for all these years, determined to be a decent guy. _A loyal friend; not a jerk whose feelings couldn’t be reciprocated._

“Uh. What?”

“I said, I think I’m in love with you. And I think maybe I have been for a while, but I was keeping so many things a secret that I got sort of lost in it, holding myself back. I love you, Schneider.”

If it was possible, the colors surrounding them grew even brighter, everything he owned more vibrant and alive and glorious.

Penelope wasn’t the only one who had gotten very good at holding back. It was the center of his life, the things he **didn’t** do. The drinks he didn’t have, the risks he stopped taking, the connections he avoided.

It was safer that way. It was better.

_Except when it wasn’t._

There was safe, like texting her instead of drinking, and there was scared, like standing up and pacing away just then instead of touching her.

He could be scared and safe at the same time, where Penelope was concerned.

But he could never keep that wall up when she cried.

“I’m sorry,” she said, getting to her feet. He could see the tears on her cheeks, even from across the room. “I didn’t mean to make tonight harder. Please, text Nick instead of drinking. Come upstairs if you need company, if that will help. My mom’s up there, I can stay in my room...just don't do anything stupid, Schneider.”

“Wait.”

All his arguments for caution, all his rational decisions up to this point, they were gone. He was at her side before she reached the door. He knew that if she left, she might not come back, and he didn’t want her to go.

Not now. _Not ever._

“Pen. Penelope.”

Schneider’s hand was on her shoulder. Then when she turned to face him, it was in her hair, at the base of her neck.

He was burying his face in the curve there, curling himself down to meet her, holding on.

She started crying harder with Schneider wrapped around her, but she didn’t mind. It was a good cry, the healthy kind, that passed like summer rain. It was years of knowing where she belonged and not wanting to admit it.

It was months of watching Schneider love somebody else and feeling like she’d missed her window.

_There was no window. She should have known him better than that._

This was Schneider.

Her soulmate.

And he’d just been waiting for an invitation.

****

When her tears stopped, Schneider was still holding on. It didn’t feel like he was trying to comfort her, though he did that instinctively. It felt like he was holding on for him, like he needed to be near her even more than Penelope needed him there.

She reached up, cautiously, resting her hands against his bare arms where they surrounded her. It snapped him out of whatever had brought him to her.

“How long have you known?” Schneider asked, stepping back as she thought about her answer. 

Part of Penelope felt like she had always known, like she could feel it even that first day when he was hitting on her and she was confiding in him.

Maybe somehow, underneath her stubborn need to prove that she knew better than the universe, she recognized him. _That he would be her person, then, now, always._

**_Forever_** didn’t seem like the right answer, though, even though it felt true. It wouldn’t answer the question Schneider was really asking. 

_How long have you known and kept it from me?_

“That day in the hall, with my groceries,” she admitted, and she waited to see if he understood. 

She had never known if he remembered that encounter. If he had been too drunk for it to stick, or if he'd even understood what was happening. 

“That first second when you touched me,” Penelope added, feeling like she was confessing all over again, as though words like _love_ and _home_ and _family_ were woven into this memory, ready to be laid bare at his feet. 

“Back then?” Schneider looked paler than usual.

She had kept this from him to protect them both, but also because she didn’t want to lose him. She knew the danger of keeping it a secret--and the price she might pay now that the secret was out.

Penelope lifted her chin, pulled herself up to her full height to better look him in the eye, and accepted whatever would come next.

“Yes. Back then. I’ve known since then. Maybe I should have told you, but it didn’t seem like a good idea at the time, and once we came back here, me and the kids...honestly, Schneider, I didn’t know what to say.”

“You didn’t think the truth would be a good start?”

“That’s easy for you to say. I was married to Victor. I was living in your building. My life, my kids’ lives, my mom...we were all tied to you. It was too dangerous, mixing soulmates into that.”

“It was already mixed in,” Schneider argued back. “And it’s not **easy** for me to say, Penelope. You don’t think I thought about that? You don’t think I carried this around just like you did--falling in love with my best friend, feeling like it was inevitable but still wrong, somehow, because you had no idea and things weren’t that way for you?”

Schneider had never raised his voice at her. A little bit when he was drunk, maybe, and defensive with it, but never like this. Schneider had been hurt by her before, but she’d never seen him angry. At her.

It was fair. Just...surprising. She’d expected it and it was still surprising, because this was Schneider. The guy who left when she told him to and stayed when she needed him.

_The man she loved._

“I’ve really fucked this up, haven’t I?” She asked instead of offering him more excuses or apologies. 

She was changing the pattern too; he also knew what to expect from her and this wasn’t it, this easy melting away of her own defenses. Penelope could see the confusion in his eyes--they were more frustrated than mad, which soothed her anxiety.

“Fucked it up?” Schneider frowned. “What...what do you think you fucked up, exactly?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Everything? I swore I wouldn’t mess with our friendship, and I went and told you I’m in love with you. I didn’t want to blurt this all out before either of us was ready, because if there ever was a chance that we could be something--it couldn’t happen this way. I lied, I kept things from you. If we can’t be a couple and we can’t be friends...well, I ruined everything.”

“Pen. Stop.”

“Stop what? Stop telling the truth, the hard stuff we don’t want to acknowledge because it hurts? Isn’t that how we got here, everything falling apart while we're standing in your living room in the middle of the night?”

“Penelope!” He was in her space again, this time without touching her. She had to crane her neck to see him at this angle, but his tone demanded it. “We’re not falling apart. You don’t get to decide how I feel.”

“I--” She shook her head. “I’m not doing that.”

“You are. You’re painting a really vivid picture, but don’t I get a say? In how I feel, and what happens now?”

“Don’t be stupid, of course you do. I was freaking out--logic wasn’t really involved.” 

She centered herself, deep breathing while Schneider waited.

“My turn?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. Two things.”

“Okay.”

“First, you could have told me. At least then you would have known that I knew you were my soulmate--and you would have realized that I never knew I was yours. It would’ve been nice to know that all those years ago. That would have been helpful information.”

“Yeah.”

“Second thing.” He took a step back, the better to look at her without height differences getting in the way. 

“I’m in love with you, too, Penelope. I can’t even remember a time when I wasn’t. Not really.”

“Oh,” she whispered. That rocked her where she stood. Something about hearing the words, about how his eyes shone while he said them. It felt like the most shocking revelation, and the least, all at once.

“Yeah. So, would it have been nice if you’d been honest with me sooner? Sure. But have you ruined everything in the whole world beyond repair, so that now I have to change my name and sell the building and go start a new life in Saskatchewan? I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Neither would I. God, you’re so dramatic sometimes. What’s even in Saskatchewan?”

“A lot of lakes.”

_“Ay, Dios mío._ Schneider, what are you saying?”

“I’m trying to tell you that you’re not too late, for me. You’re not too fucked up for me. Penelope, you’ve always been my soulmate. I wasn’t ready for that when we met, and neither were you. But I am now.”

She felt her fingernails digging into her palms, and had to force her hands to relax at her sides. _Could it really be that simple?_

Things were always simple with Schneider, weren’t they? Underneath the chaos of life, wasn’t that one of the reasons she loved him?

“So it’s your turn again, Pen. Tell me what you’re thinking..”

“It’s too easy,” she answered, wincing as soon as she heard her own thoughts in the open air. _She was such a mess._

“Easy.”

“Yeah. Come on, you weren’t thinking the same thing? The truth comes out, and we just...what? Live happily ever after?”

“Maybe not happily ever after, because we live in LA and not an enchanted forest. But is it really that crazy to aim for happy? Isn’t that what soulmates are for?”

“I wouldn’t know!” She resisted the urge to yell it, but it was a close call. “You spent all these years thinking I was meant to be with Victor. I spent them knowing that I'd ignored what destiny was telling me, so maybe I didn’t deserve it. We can’t wave all that away.”

“We’re not waving anything away. And you’re avoiding the issue.”

“There are **so** many issues.”

“There’s only one that matters. One question.”

“And that is...”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

It was late, she was worn down, she hadn’t meant to say that out loud. _Even if it was true._ Penelope pressed her lips together, like maybe she could hold the words in retroactively.

But Schneider was smiling. And he was inching closer, dropping a kiss onto her forehead and beaming down.

“You already have that. What else?”

“To stop worrying. To be less lonely. To not feel guilty anymore. To be happy.”

“That’s a better list. That’s a bouquet list,” he added with a grin. “We can work on that together, eh?”

His fingers were laced through hers, lightly, giving her plenty of space to move. If she wanted to.

“Are you going to ask me?”

_To marry me?_ Panic spiked in her mind. _Thank god she didn’t say that one out loud._ Penelope was pretty sure she knew what he meant, and it wasn’t that.

“What do **you** want, Schneider?”

“I want...to take you to a movie. Maybe a museum. Or a play. Something fun, something we can talk about over dessert.”

He was holding both her hands now, not loosely. Affectionately. It didn’t even surprise her when he lifted them up, kissing her knuckles.

“I want to hold your hand under the table when I come over for dinner. And I’d really, really like to kiss you.”

Schneider's hand slid up her arm, trailing warmth along the strong curve of her shoulder, resting against the soft spot where her collarbone dipped.

“Sound good?”

She took full advantage of his distracted charm and cautious pace, nearly knocking him off balance when she reached up with both hands and yanked Schneider down by the soft cotton of his shirt.

Penelope branded his mouth with hers, sinking into the kiss. _Mine,_ she thought fiercely, feeling it echo in her soul. _Each other's, now._

As much as she enjoyed knocking him off balance, she caught the surprised sound he made in the back of his throat--a reminder that Schneider was delicate even if he pretended otherwise. She eased off, watching his eyes close, and smiled against his mouth. _Yes, she wanted this. She wanted this and more._

She wanted lazy mornings and silly nights and sneaking movie snacks in his pockets whether he liked it or not because even if he **could** afford theater prices they shouldn’t reward the theaters for outrageous markups.

Schneider pulled back to rest her forehead against hers. “Does this mean we’re dating?”

She laughed. “We could say that, yeah.”

“Do you think it’ll upset the kids?”

Penelope considered that, knowing he needed a serious answer. “I don’t think so. It might surprise them. They’ve never asked about their dad, the soulmate thing. And I never told them.”

“Of course not.” There was no rancor in his words, just simple understanding. 

“You know that I’m not...ashamed of you, or anything, right? It wasn't that I didn’t want you to be my soulmate.”

He lifted a shoulder, letting it fall, neither confirming or denying her worry.

“That was never it, Schneider. I wasn’t upset that it was you--I was upset that it was **anybody,** when I’d already decided to choose Victor.”

“Pen, it’s fine. I was a mess. I was such a mess that I didn’t even see how much of a mess I was.”

“I know. But I need you to know that wasn’t why. It just took me a long time to understand why you were my soulmate. We were so different.”

“Total opposites. I get it.”

“No, you don’t. I figured it out too late. We’re the same where it counts.” She reached up and rested her hand above his heart. 

“You love my family. You fight every day to do better, to be better. When you’re wrong, you set your pride aside. You’re not perfect, and you worry about that, about whether you deserve to be happy. I understand all of that because I feel the exact same way.”

His eyes got bigger and bigger behind his glasses, the longer she spoke. _They were so **blue,** _she thought, not for the first time. They were the first blue she’d ever seen, that day in the hallway, which maybe explained why they were her absolute favorite shade. 

_Or maybe that was just because they were his._

“But you can relax a little, Schneider,” she finished, tapping her fingertips against his chest. “Because you don’t need to be perfect. You’re perfect for me, and that’s better. It may have taken us a while, but when it comes to soulmates? I got the best one.”

He swallowed hard, throat bobbing above where her hand had made itself at home, as he processed what she was telling him. 

Penelope could feel how fast Schneider’s heart was racing, and it made her less embarrassed to acknowledge the way she was a little dizzy around him now, when they were too close for too long. 

_It wasn’t a bad dizzy,_ she thought as he pulled her in for a longer kiss. A slow, lingering one, a _thank you_ he never had to say. _It was just a lot._

“Not to be so high school,” Schneider murmured, his lips near her ear. “But no, Penelope, **I** got the best one.”

She grinned. “Did not.” 

“Did too.”

She seriously considered sticking her tongue out at him, but settled for an eyeroll. _Yeah, he was a lot. He was made for her, wasn’t he?_

A perfect match, in the best imperfect way. 

“Hey, soulmate,” Penelope said, knowing that would knock the argument out of his head. “You want to come downstairs with me?”

“It’s like three in the morning, isn’t it? Lydia will think there’s been an emergency.”

“Definitely.” She wrapped an arm around him. “Don’t you want to be there when she finds out that it’s the exact opposite?”

“She might have a forehead kiss for me,” he realized, delighted by the thought.

“Schneider, she’s going to be kissing you on the mouth at a minimum. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t propose. On my behalf.”

“Oh! ...Oh.” It was clear that his thoughts hadn’t moved quite that quickly yet. “Uh, should we talk about...?”

There was a lot to figure out now, all the decisions she’d fought so hard to avoid up to this point. _Where would they live? Who would he be to her kids? How would the money work?_

She patted his back, steering him toward the front door. Anything he really needed, they had at their house. At least for the one night. 

“We’ve been dating for ten minutes. I think the rest can wait a day or two.”

“Right. Cool, cool, cool. Sounds smart.” The nerves in Schneider’s voice calmed hers down a little. 

It could all wait a day or two. 

For now, it was enough that when they approached her door, Schneider slid her hand into his--a promise that he was right there with her, no matter what. 

_It was more than enough._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title borrowed from "Colorblind" by Counting Crows.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from "Rainbow" by Kesha.
> 
> #19 in my 100 Stories Challenge for ODAAT. Prompt list [here](https://actuallylorelaigilmore.tumblr.com/post/186061589290/because-i-needed-a-challenge-to-get-me-back-into).


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